The Russian space agency Roscosmos announced on Sunday that the Luna-25 probe, Moscow’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years, crashed on the Moon after an incident during pre-landing maneuvers.
In a statement, the space agency revealed that communication with Luna-25 was lost at 2:57 pm (1157 GMT) on Saturday.
According to preliminary findings, the lander “has ceased to exist following a collision with the Moon’s surface”.
Earlier, Roskosmos reported that the spacecraft ran into unspecified trouble while trying to enter a pre-landing orbit and that its specialists were analyzing the situation.
“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred onboard the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” according to a post on Telegram.
Meanwhile, specialists are investigating the incident to determine the cause.
Roscosmos had cooperated with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the lunar program. However, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, ESA ended its work with Moscow.
